For my upcycling project, I am going to make a ball shelf made out of repurposed wood. I got the idea of making a ball shelf from the consistent footballs, soccer balls and basketballs laying around on the floor in my house. Additionally, these balls always fall off of flat shelves and are ineffective. As a solution, I am deciding to create a shelf that holds these balls in an aesthetic way that can additionally highlight these sports balls. There are a lot of ball shelfs out there on the market but these don’t really have an aesthetic to them. They usually are made of some tubing or basket material which isn’t very interesting.
Basic ball shelf (3)
There is no true aesthetic in the design of these ball shelfs so I am going to aim to create a ball shelf that expresses a rustic aesthetic by using old woods to create the shelf. The rustic aesthetic will transform the ball shelf into a wall piece that can be shown off rather then used as purely an organizing product. Rustic is an aesthetic that is based around themes of rural living, cabins and farms, using wood as one of its main building materials which I find really interesting. This wood is often weathered, old and displays its natural grains and imperfections. The rustic aesthetic is also characterized by “primitive” and ” unfinished” meaning that the forms of the design shows imperfections and natural features (2). Another big characteristic of rustic design is its way of being in harmony with the imperfections of the surroundings. This rustic aesthetic is shown below:
Classic rustic aesthetic (4)
For my rustic ball shelf, I would like to highlight the interesting grains and shapes of the wood to help fulfill the rustic aesthetic. In terms of wooden ball shelves, I have only really seen these shelves for smaller balls such as pool balls and golf balls. Here are some examples of this:
Rustic golf ball shelf (5)
Rustic pool ball shelf (6)
In these two examples, they use wood to make them more of a rustic theme, however in my shelf, I hope to use more weathered or natural woods to give off a deeper feeling of a rustic aesthetic. This includes using live edge woods and stump slabs illustrated in the following image:
Live edge shelves (7)
Using live edge woods and cutting holes in the wood would satisfy the rustic aesthetic that I am aiming for. To make these shelves more of a ball shelf, I plan on cutting holes in the slabs to create pockets for all shapes and sizes of balls. The shelf will also hopefully incorporate features where you can actually adjust the height of each shelf so that all ball sizes can fit on the design. As a general design concept, here is where my mind is headed:
General concept of my design (8)
In my full design, I am going to aim for five different shelves to hold five different balls. There will be a back “spine” to the design where all of the shelves will attach to and move up and down on. This feature of adjustability is something I am going to aim for but I recognize this may be very hard with the materials I find for this project. Overall, I am happy with my design concept and its aesthetic exploration into rustic.
Works Cited:
(1) https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Rustic#:~:text=9%20Gallery-,History,the%2018th%20and%2019th%20centuries.
(2) https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Rustic_style
Images:
(3) https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/718c1olbYlL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg
(4) https://ericabuteau.com/2018/05/21/rustic-home-aesthetic/
(5) https://www.wearefamilycrafts.com/listing/739041574/golf-ball-holdergolf-ball-shelfgolf
(6) https://b681519.smushcdn.com/681519/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/RR-BR-04.jpg?lossy=1&strip=1&webp=1
(7) https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155303888249355068/
(8) Photo taken by me
(9) Ball shelf image generated by Chatgbt
2 Comments. Leave new
This is such a clear vision….not just upcycling for the sake of a project, but actually solving a real-life problem in style! Love how you’re turning sports chaos into rustic decor. Functional and aesthetic!Excited to see this masterpiece in action!
This is awesome upcycle project. I personally know that you’re sports enthusiast and this is really helpful project for the all the sports balls. As I personally know that its really hard to keep all the balls in one place but this is actually an awesome project. I look forward for its final product.